Grantee: Good Business Lab (GBL)
Partner organizations: N/A
Country of focus: India and Bangladesh
Grant period: November 2025 – January 2027
FutureWORKS Asia is part of a global initiative supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, aimed at addressing the evolving challenges in the world of work across the Global South. As the Asian arm of the broader FutureWORKS network, the initiative is led by LIRNEasia and focuses on supporting high-quality, innovative, and gender-responsive research to inform skills development and policy pathways for an inclusive and sustainable future of work in Asia.
Following the completion of the first competitive selection process, five research projects under Cycle 1 are currently ongoing. In November 2025, FutureWORKS Asia onboarded seven additional research projects under Cycle 2, expanding the regional research network. These Cycle 2 projects will run until April 2027, deepening evidence and policy engagement across diverse future-of-work themes, including climate transitions, gender, and labour market transformation.
GBL has been selected to conduct a 15 month research and advocacy project, Heat, Health, and Gender: Climate Risks and Decent Work in India and Bangladesh’s Garment Sector.
Rising temperatures and extreme heat pose growing risks to worker health, productivity, and earnings—especially in labour-intensive industries such as garment manufacturing. Yet there is limited evidence that directly links daily heat exposure to medically recorded health outcomes and economic losses at the worker level.
This project examines how heat stress affects workers’ health, absenteeism, wages, and retention in the formal garment sector in India and Bangladesh, with particular attention to gendered vulnerabilities. Women are often concentrated in roles that involve repetitive tasks, limited flexibility, and poorer ventilation, making them especially exposed to climate-related risks.
By combining large-scale administrative data with qualitative insights, the study generates robust, gender-responsive evidence to inform climate-resilient workplace practices and labour policy.
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Research objectives
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Methodology
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Grantee information
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Research team
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Publications
The project aims to generate new evidence on how daily heat stress affects the health of individual workers, and also their attendance, earnings, and retention in India and Bangladesh’s formal manufacturing sector. Furthermore, it aims to:
- Quantify how daily heat exposure influences health complaints and workplace injuries.
- Assess how heat-related health incidents affect absenteeism, wage loss, and job exits.
- Examine whether repeated exposure to heat increases worker attrition.
- Identify how occupational roles and working conditions shape gender differences in health and economic outcomes.
This project adopts a mixed-methods research design that combines large-scale administrative data with health records, weather data, and qualitative interviews to examine how daily heat stress affects worker health, earnings, and employment outcomes in the formal garment sector in India and Bangladesh.
The study is based on a high-frequency dataset linking worker-level administrative records (attendance, wages, job entry and exit), factory clinic health logs, and local weather data across multiple factory sites. Heat exposure is measured using precise indicators such as Wet Bulb Temperature and heat indices, allowing the study to capture the intensity of heat stress experienced in indoor work environments. Quantitative analysis will estimate how daily heat shocks influence medically recorded illnesses and injuries, and how these health events translate into absenteeism, wage loss, and worker attrition. The analysis also examines gender differences, accounting for variations in job roles, tenure, and working conditions.
To complement this analysis, the project includes semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with workers, supervisors, HR staff, and clinic personnel. These qualitative insights help document workers’ lived experiences of heat exposure, coping strategies, task allocation, and barriers to adaptation, adding context to the statistical findings.
Good Business Lab (GBL) is a labour research and innovation organisation that uses data-driven evidence to improve the lives of low-income workers while demonstrating that investments in worker well-being also generate returns for businesses. Operating across South Asia and globally, GBL focuses on female labour participation, skills development, workplace health, and climate resilience. Through close partnerships with firms, policymakers, and research institutions, GBL bridges rigorous research with practical workplace and policy solutions
- Dr. Achyuta Adhvaryu – Principal Investigator, Good Business Lab
Provides overall leadership, research design, and policy engagement.
- Dr. Anant Nyshadham – Co-Principal Investigator
Leads strategic oversight and stakeholder coordination.
- Mr. Smit Gade – Co-Principal Investigator
Oversees implementation, partner engagement, and analysis.
- Dr. Sowmya Dhanaraj – Co-Principal Investigator
Advises on research design and data analysis.
- Ms. Indu Chatwani – Data Manager
Manages data collection, integration, and quality assurance.
This project is one of the twelve projects selected under the FutureWORKS Asia, a research initiative funded by IDRC and led by LIRNEasia, a pro-poor, pro-market think tank specializing in digital infrastructure and policy research. LIRNEasia’s work focuses on leveraging digital technology to enhance knowledge, information access, and economic opportunities, particularly for underserved communities.
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